


Inside

by EmbryonicHarmonic



Category: Code Geass, Gundam 00, INSIDE (Video Game)
Genre: Alien Geometries, Body Horror, Crossover, Disturbing Themes, Gen, anxiety writing, disturbing imagery, dystopian nightmare
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-27
Updated: 2018-07-27
Packaged: 2019-06-16 22:04:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,298
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15446826
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EmbryonicHarmonic/pseuds/EmbryonicHarmonic
Summary: A single phone with a yellow cord that connected to a facility with no name rang.Britannia’s emperor, with his Knight of One at his side, answered.





	Inside

They were young when the facility was found.

Re-found. 

It had come from a single misstep, sending the man who would be king and his faithful knight sliding down an embankment, through space that no longer seemed real as the skies grew darker and the air grew colder. The color seemed to drain from them both, the world so desaturated and empty as their boots touched down on dirt and leaves. The forest had not been there before. It had not been anywhere. The trees grew so tall that neither of them could see the tops.

And neither could see the sky, or the way they had come. 

The world had swallowed them up. 

The path before them had never been clearer, though the skies were dark and the heaviness of fog. Even as the two walked, old friend and old friend, their footsteps seemed to grow quieter, as if the world itself was muffling them. 

They passed metal containers, great tanks with single windows in them. Some of them were open and empty. Some of them had…

...they weren’t human. They looked human, but they were not human. And they could not be human. The faces were there and not there. They were empty. They were nothing. Poor copies and shapes of people. Things that were alive only because of the machinery and whatever sort of foul liquid was keeping them alive. 

It was not a forest. Not one to grow trees and life. 

There were fresh tire tracks in the mud. Large trucks having left and gone far, far into the nothingness. Or was it even nothing? Was it just a great forest to give way to a different world? 

Neither of them had an answer. 

The rain started to fall when they reached the road, the forest looming and threatening to keep them, but there was little to see but lights and a cornfield. There was no feeling of life. There was no sense of wonderment. Only dread. Only discomfort and a crushing sorrow. Something that would have killed lesser men. And they were not lesser men. 

There was a temptation to follow the road. To see simply where it went with the rain pouring down, with how it hung over them without a care or concern for them. It was. It simply was. 

He moved across the road, with his faithful knight at his side. The mud stuck to their boots and their cloaks and capes were discarded. Pristine clothing ruined by rain and mud, and whatever filth the cornfield decided to give them. Slow, slogging steps through mud and tramping through fallen leaves was somehow worse with only the rows of corn before them and around them, and the field seemed to stretch forever. It had not looked so large from across the road, but even now it seemed to be endless. The worms beneath their boots seemed to be larger, more grotesque as they trudged on, until the corn gave way to a flooded walkway and corpses of pigs. 

Disgust and revulsion were normal reactions, and it passed their faces briefly. The churning of their stomachs, the feeling of dread, however, lingered. 

The worms feasted on the bodies, long as their arms and thick as their thumbs. Burrowing into the brains and deep into the flesh. The twitching of limbs, unnatural and vile, disturbed the mud beneath their feet. 

It was a shrieking squeal, and they both watched as one of the bloated pig corpses struggled and wobbled to its feet and charged. The first instinct, one of weakness, was to run. And neither would be faulted for such a reaction, for such a terrible feeling. The land, whatever place they were in, was not one of kindness and joy. It sucked the instincts from them both. 

Knight and king-to-be, they held their ground.

The pig was wild and maddened, the worm sticking from a wound in its head. He grabbed it, and it crashed through the door of the building they had come to. The worm was ripped from the brain, and the pig fell dead once more. 

It should not have been so terrifying. 

It should not have been like this. 

But they went inside. 

It had looked like a barn on the outside, but inside it was more like a warehouse. The floors were concrete, with half-finished construction projects before them. 

And there was a person. Well, it looked like a person. It was crouched in a ball on the floor, motionless and unmoving with skin as pale as moonlight. No amount of poking or prodding, noise or commotion would move it. It was the discovery of a nearby helmet, something glowing with a foul, orange-red light, that moved the thing. The helmet, whatever it did, caused the horrible thing to move, and only then was the nightmare only furthered. The thing, the human shape, had no face. No eyes. No movement that looked human. It trudged along, head looking forwards but with no features to see. 

It pushed aside the wall of tools and materials, and cleared the way forwards. Only after the helmet was removed from the knight did it stop moving, curled back into a ball, unmoving. 

They went forwards. 

The farm was behind them with the rain, mud gave way to concrete and a harsh set of fog and grays. The trucks were finally seen, large trailers with men in masks directing lines of faceless things that looked like humans. They were not humans, they could not be humans. But they slumped and trudged along as if in some poor mockery of humanity. Drones at best. Inhuman at worst. Or maybe there was no ‘worst.’ 

There was a large building before them, and no amount of sneaking would keep them undetected for long. 

Men in masks with guns sounded some alarm, yelling to each other as dogs were released. The knight and his king-to-be were no cowards. They had been forged through warfare and hardship, power and peril. But they ran. There was nothing to do but outrun the dogs. Whatever they had done, what ladders they climbed and buildings they had crossed had only given them distance, and the alarms grew quiet as they drew closer to… well, neither of them knew what they were moving towards. There was no way back now. Only forwards. 

They were moving, parallel to the lines of bodies they had seen, to the countless throngs of things that looked like people and were not people. They could not be. The few words the two spoke to one another had proven it. That they were seeing something that was hard to comprehend and harder to justify. Wherever they were, it was far from their home. 

The machines that were awake watched for intruders with white lights. Neither one of them were willing to test what the penalty for being spotted was, and they had been able to move to the elevator with only pounding hearts. 

He was not going to say it to his king-to-be.

He was not going to say it to his knight.

They were afraid. Whatever they were moving towards, they were afraid to find it. It had been just a slide down an embankment. Now they were moving through this city, over rooftops and only pausing to look at the lines of those things that looked like people. Neither wanted to call them people. They were just… husks. Not even husks. Shambling, flesh things that looked real. That looked like people. 

The roof broke beneath their feet, and it was the flesh and bone things that broke their fall. 

They ran. 

They pushed past the line of those shambling drones. Shoving them aside as handlers and dogs chased them. There was nothing to do but run, and escape. Or try to escape. They had to get away, they had to just… 

Through empty rooms, through large warehouses, they ran until it seemed like there were no more buildings, until things seemed to be broken, until they passed a subway line with masked men. Away from them. Away from the shouting and searching lights. Until there was no floor beneath them, and there was water threatening to swallow them up. 

They watched and waited, seeing a small machine surface, the man inside - a man, one with eyes - climbing the platform and disappearing into an office. The knight glanced in the window, seeing two men now just staring at a TV. Whatever was on it, he could not see. They moved on, cramming into the small machine and going deep into the nothingness. They were going to keep going. They had to now. There was no way to leave by going back. They had to go forwards. They had to keep going. 

And in the depths, there was no safety.

Something moved. Something swam in the darkness, and the light from their little submersible barely caught it as they pushed their way through underwater doors and through broken walls. 

But the thing soon passed into their field of vision, and the anxiety that had been boiling under the surface spiked in the form of shaking hands and a struggle to keep the light on this thing. This human shape, this human thing with no face and long black hair. Like a siren, or maybe some other sort of beast, trying to grab onto their submarine, trying to break the glass, trying to drown them both. There was only a chance to run, they had to. Neither of them would swim these depths, neither could run. 

They forced through. They could do nothing more, dragging themselves from the submersible and into a flooded facility, into a place where there could be nothing but carefully timed jumps onto rickety platforms that were barely holding on. But the Knight would catch him. And they would have each other. They could carry each other onwards until they could only swim across a darkened lake, towards a great wall dotted with white lights. 

The sand beneath their feet, dry and soft, was a change from the metal, from the mud, from the concrete, but there was little that was joyous or to celebrate. It was a change, and they pushed on, through the opening in the wall and inside. 

A mine.

The air around them trembled. The very ground shook, and they could not find the source. Machinery? A shockwave? There was something worse. The shambling things were there, in cages, loose, waiting for orders. Waiting for something.

The knight and his king-to-be passed them by. They could not look at the faceless beings. Not any more. For if they watched, if they looked for more than a second, they would have had to see the broken necks and the way the heads just bobbed against shoulders and chests. How they did not seem bothered by their injuries. They did not need to see the heaviness that weighed on them. 

They talked, once, about if they should kill them. If they should put these fleshy things out of their misery. But ultimately, they passed on. 

Through the mines.

Into a building.

A building with desks. With overhead lights. 

With rooms of water suspended above them and alien geometries. With bodies on tethers suspended above them. Like incubators. Experimenting on half-formed things. Were these the same harvested creatures in the forest? Neither wanted to know. Not how the insanity of this building became. 

They were inside. 

They were very much inside now. 

And no matter how they moved, through doors and up stairs, the more human it looked. Soon, they only saw desks and occasional workers. Men with no faces, with black hair and black ties. Watching creatures in glass cubicles, making reports. The king-to-be and his knight were glanced at, and only occasionally stared at, until the open office was open. 

There was light. There were men in white shirts with black ties standing around a large set of windows, all murmuring to one another in languages that seemed normal but neither could place. Whatever was being said, it was about the glass. 

They walked.

The bodies parted, letting them both look. Letting the man and his knight look at what was so unsettling, what was so frightening. 

On the other side of the glass, in a great tank of water, was something silver. It had a human shape. It had hair. Limbs. Curled up into itself in a ball. It had wires and devices hooked up to it. And it was motionless. It did not move. 

Someone spoke, in a language they knew. A man with no face, leading them into another office. Inside. They were asked questions. What had become of the old. Who was the new king. But no questions they asked were answered. Nothing about this place, whatever it was, had an answer. The man without a face adjusted his glasses, and told him that they would continue their work. That the emperor would know if things changed.

The man who would be king asked how he knew, and the man with no face did not answer. 

\------

A phone rang. 

A single phone with a yellow cord that connected to a facility with no name rang.

Britannia’s emperor, with his Knight of One at his side, answered. 

“Its eyes are open.”

The call ended, and the man looked at his knight. 

There was nothing to be said. He rose from his throne, and the two departed for a location that only the knights knew. Where knights who wished to earn their title went to prove themselves. That they all had to stare at the abyss. That they all had to go through, to see the silver thing with their own eyes. 

The emperor and his knight went inside.


End file.
